Again; would opening the doors of a lunatic asylum, and letting free the patients thereof, be an act of kindness or friendship towards them? You reply, Certainly not! Yet this would be granting them immediate liberty--this would be pure abolitionism! But, you rejoin, the condition of the persons--their mental inabilities disqualify them for liberty till they are cured--till they can take care of themselves--till there is no danger of their doing violence to others; therefore, keeping them confined till _then_, is in fact an act of kindness towards them,--and the opposite course would be most injurious to them! Thank you, kind reader, these are identically the same reasons I give for not advocating the _immediate_ emancipation of the slaves. I give you full credit for the wisdom and propriety of your reasons: be so liberal as to grant me the same indulgence--to give me the same credit for the sincerity of my actions. It is probable the Abolitionist will reply, that the condition of the slaves, and of the inmates of a lunatic asylum, is very different. I answer, without fear of contradiction, that, as far as mental incapability, the vast mass of the slaves are as incapable of taking care of themselves as the great proportion of lunatics; and this we shall fully demonstrate in a subsequent chapter. Again; do you think children ought to be freed from all parental control? You reply, certainly not; and you give the same reasons as you have just adduced for not setting lunatics free. Is not this, then, a case parallel with that of the slaves? And in both, I may as justly accuse you of oppression, of tyranny, of a hatred to liberty, because you will not emancipate lunatics, and all children, as you accuse me, for not advocating the immediate abolition of slavery. _Slavery_ is derived from _slave_; as _servant_ comes from _service_. In the English language the two are distinct from one another; the former term being applied to _involuntary_, the latter to voluntary, servitude. But this is not the case in either the Hebrew, Greek, or Latin tongues; one and the same word, in each language, signifies both voluntary and involuntary service. Thus "_obed_," in Hebrew--"δουλος," in Greek--and "servus," in Latin, signify what we mean by the terms, _servant_ and _slave_. Hence in works written in any of these languages, we can never tell from the word _itself_ whether the person to whom the term is applied was a _slave_, or a _servant_: it is therefore only by concomitant expressions or circumstances that we can come to a conclusion as to the actual nature of his situation. This is the case both in the Old and New Testament.